ARCHE - BUTOH
arche-type subconscious
archi-tecture shape
orchi-d perfection
arhce-ology roots
butoh dance
by dan maccarthy
BUTOH WORKSHOP "EMBODYING THE SPIRIT" by Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) USA, Seattle February, 4 - 5, 2012 12:00 p.m. - 15:00 p.m. Technical Youth Center "ANNAS-2" .jpg.opt372x558o0,0s372x558.jpg) Photo: Marco Zellman | Embodying The Spirit explores endless questions. What is life? What is the human condition? What is the body? How can we experience infinity within the body/mind? Reduction of the physical body and ego-self allowing fluidity and transformation are fundamental to Butoh. We will concentrate on the union of mind, body, and image within Butoh aesthetics through a process of simultaneously uncovering and creating the body. Recognizing the body as carrier of ancient history and the consciousness of our cellular body, we seek an interweaving and balancing of the universal and individual selves. The body is deconstructed to reveal the universal self and expose our primal roots through heightening the nature body after which the self is recreated in a revitalized journey of individuation. Workshop Structure The workshop structure includes exercises and exploration of physical body, elemental body, and ethereal body, and ends in free improvisation. Group and partner work will facilitate participant’s individual and collective journeys. Part I: Physical body -- Yoga and vigorous exercises to stretch, strengthen, and balance the body. Part II: Elemental body -- Reduce awareness of physical body to reawaken cellular memory and elemental forces which are fundamental to the body. Breath and sound exercises to heighten awareness and flow of chi (energy). Explore the body as empty sack (breath/air, water, etc). Part III: Ethereal body – Transcend ordinary space and time. Experience the journey from multi-layered image to movement, the embodiment of imagery towards continual transformation of the body. Awaken infinity in the body. Part IV: Free improvisation.
Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) Joan Laage has performed under the name Kogut Butoh since living in Krakow, Poland from 2004-2006. She studied under Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Japan and performed in Ashikawa's group, Gnome in 1988-89 where she met SU-EN (Sweden). In 1991, Joan moved to Seattle, Washington where she founded Dappin' Butoh. She has performed and taught workshops in Sweden, England, Denmark, Hungary, Japan, Korea and New Zealand as well as at Butoh festivals in Paris, San Francisco, New York, Seattle, Chicago, and Portland. Last May, she was a featured artist along with Katsura Kan and Akaji Maro at a Butoh symposium at the University of California in Los Angeles. Joan wrote a dissertation on Butoh (Texas Woman's University, 1993), and is featured in Sondra Horton Fraleigh's books, Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh, Zen and Japan and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy. She is a founding member of Seattle-based DAIPANbutoh Collective and a tour guide at the Seattle Japanese Garden.
Place: Technical Youth Center “Annas-2”, www.tjn.lv. Number of participants – limited. Work language – English. 3 hours per day. More information: Simona Orinska, (+371)29394500, SimonaOrinska@inbox.lv |
WHAT IS BUTOH
What Butoh means for me?
Butoh – moment between breath-in and breath-out.
Butoh – moment between Life and Death.
Butoh – sense of freedom and expand of personal borders.
Butoh – self-exploring.
Butoh – to dance myself and the way of humanity.
Butoh – dance of soul, borne from mud and blood.
Butoh – Nature, Earth, Sky, Being, Emptiness, Beginning, Unconscious, Asymmetry, Sexuality, Meditation.
Butoh body – liberate human-animal body who’s head is over heels, and legs – strongly grounded.
What is Butoh?
Butoh is based on Japanese culture, inspired by Zen, European and American modern dance, Surrealism, Dadaism and German expressionism. Butoh has been also called grotesque, shocking, poetic and mesmerizing. Butoh has a unique quality of „body archeology”, digging out something buried deep in the body, which seems to be a unique if compared to the other dance styles. „Butoh body” is like a personal body, others body and World’s body at the same time.
Butoh history
Butoh dance is a performing art originated in Post World-War II Japan and was first performed in 1959 (origins – Tatsumi Hijikata). It is a contemporary form of dance that has little to due with either traditional Japanese dances or most western forms of dance, although it does borrow elements from some of each. The most common factor in Butoh is one item that it does borrow from some traditional Japanese dance and theater: white body makeup.
The most unconventional aspect of Butoh is its movement and the preparation that the dancer undergoes to prepare for the dance. It is a dance that has as much to do with meditation or martial art training as it does to dance in the conventional sense. It derives its power from what the individual who dances it brings to it in a very mental as well as physical sense. It is a directing of energy to the audience from the surroundings, the environment and the audience themselves as much as from the mind in a way similar to how a pastry chef uses a paper cone to direct the icing onto a cake. The important thing with this is not the transformation into a chicken, but the transformation itself, the fact that you change.
Butoh connects the conscious with the unconscious. Movement is not dictated from the outside, but, appears in the interaction between the outer and inner world. In the words of Grotowski butoh is the search for "a very ancient form of art where ritual and artistic creation were seamless. Where poetry was song, song was incantation, movement was dance."
Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, Sankai-Juku
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xYsO7OpQkQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUjhQLB0hXY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gw8FOuw6_UU&feature=related
Simona Orinska's butoh
Photogallery: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SFDTxYOnk8
Live performance: http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/a/u/1/ZomdS4xEze0
Videodance "eyes fluttering in my knees": http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/u/5/PQbxWefN-pc
Videodance "Mud": http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/u/2/Y7kyG9rw1oY
Videodance "Inside": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQ1zoZp4oY4
Info about "Sacred Dances of the Night": http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/u/4/B_HWBg1w4uE
Video about butoh performance "eyes fluttering in my knees" (Latvian National Television 7):
http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/a/u/2/pOKVWlYRCDY
http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/a/u/1/m0JDjSFV880
http://www.youtube.com/user/SimonaOrinska#p/a/u/0/NRD6-_BPGNU
BUTOH STUDIO „Dance Borned From Mud. Moving Our Inner Sight”
Aim of the Studio
Unfolding
of body energy and creativity potential, awareness of body-mind. There
will be butoh dance techniques based on dance movement therapy methods.
No specific dance skills required!
Butoh
and dance movement therapy has similarities. That’s why dance movement
therapy methods are used. It is the psychotherapeutic use of movement
and dance through which a person can engage creatively in a process to
further their emotional, cognitive, physical and social integration.
The studio is based on philosophical assumptions of phenomenology and
humanistic approaches.
There
will be three main stages – movement, mediation and verbal part. Afterward participants will be encouraged to make the final
performance, based on workshop themes and actions.
Subject
Butoh
base. Dance improvisation. Body awareness, exploring. Voice and
movement. Authentic Movement. Asymmetry. Concentration.
Border-situation. MA-empty space. Coordination. Contact. Composition.
Imagination. Calligraphy and choreography. Deep relaxation. Expression.
Spontanity. Faces-masks. Impulses...
Information
Please, send your application (short CV and motivation letter) to e-mail: SimonaOrinska@inbox.lv.
More information: phone (+371) 29394500
Number of participants are limited.
Please, if you have some questions, contact studio leader.
„Butoh
requires both getting off and present, which is difficult. It is
necessary to be in a deep relaxation and trust in your body impulses.
Sometimes I feel my body is like a thing under control of my mind.
There is also thought it is necessary just to let it be, but it is
difficult anyway.”
/From participant reflections/
